Taylor’s future is unlikely to include politics

A couple of weeks ago, Ivy Taylor was talking to a friend about her future.

The former San Antonio mayor, who lost a bitter runoff election last month to Ron Nirenberg, didn’t specify what line of work she wanted to attempt next, but she was clear about the parameters she had set for herself.

Express Newsletters

Get the latest news, sports and food features sent directly to your inbox.

“She said her focus is to find employment that has the adequate compensation to make up for her eight years of public service,” a Taylor associate told the San Antonio Express-News on the condition of anonymity. “She just said she really needed to get to work and earn a paycheck.”

It’s an understandable sentiment.

For six of Taylor’s eight years on the City Council, she earned a negligible salary from the city (roughly $1,000 a year during her 2009-14 stint as a District 2 council member and $4,000 during her first year as mayor). Even after voters approved a 2015 council-pay charter amendment, Taylor’s annual salary of $61,725 was less than half of what goes to the Bexar County judge.

Taylor’s current situation is unique among former San Antonio mayors. Unlike Bill Thornton, an oral surgeon who was the last mayor to be voted out of office (in 1997), she doesn’t have a career to which she can readily return.

From 2009-15, Taylor served as a lecturer in UTSA's Public Administration Department. She gave up that position, however, when the council-pay amendment kicked in and sources say a return to teaching is not on her radar.

She also earned income from her husband Rodney's bail-bond company, and was forced in 2015 to amend several personal financial statements, submitted annually to the city, because she had failed to disclose that income.

The bail-bond company is now defunct, but Taylor also has derived income from her husband's rental properties, including taxpayer-funded Section 8 rent subsidies from the San Antonio Housing Authority.

Because Taylor, as the city's mayor, had appointment power over the SAHA board, this created a conflict of interest during her first 15 months in office, until the Housing Authority of Bexar County took over the Taylor vouchers. In January 2016, Taylor's council colleagues granted her immunity from any ethics complaints on the issue.

Unlike many politicians, Taylor doesn’t have a legal background. While she built alliances with the development community during her mayoral tenure, local observers can’t really see her in that line of work. Unlike Phil Hardberger, Taylor, 47, leaves the mayor’s office decades away from retirement age. Unlike Julián Castro, she doesn’t necessarily have the promise of (or the desire to seek) higher political office.

In fact, sources say Taylor has been pretty adamant that she never wants to see her own name on a ballot again. When asked about the possibility of a future political campaign from Taylor, one former associate said, “Hell no. I know she doesn’t have an interest.

“Could that ever change? I seriously doubt it. Being a politician was not her thing. And everything that came with it, she had no patience for.”

Taylor did not respond to an interview request for this column.

During her years at City Hall, Taylor frequently expressed the sentiment that she enjoyed the nuts and bolts of municipal governance, but never felt comfortable with the glad-handing associated with campaigning. In fact, her (ultimately unsuccessful) advertising message against Nirenberg was that she was a “planner, not a politician.”

Charles Williams, the godfather of the East Side business community, is a close friend of the former mayor and threw the first fundraiser for her in 2009 after she launched her District 2 council campaign.

Williams said there is buzz on the East Side about the possibility of Taylor challenging Barbara Gervin-Hawkins, a first-term Democrat, in Texas House District 120. None of that buzz, however, is coming from Taylor.

If Taylor has truly shut the door on elective office, her instincts are probably correct. At this point, she would be something of a candidate without a party.

At her core, Taylor is a moderate Democrat, but she alienated local Democrats with her 2013 vote against the city’s nondiscrimination ordinance, not to mention her suggestion, during a mayoral forum this year, that the chief cause of homelessness was “broken people” who are not “in relationships with their creator.”

Republicans gravitated toward her in 2015 because she was an alternative to former Democratic state Sen. Leticia Van de Putte, but Taylor’s bond with the GOP was always a flimsy marriage of mutual convenience.

The most natural move for Taylor would be a return to her roots in the nonprofit world. Before entering politics, she served as the director of resident services for Merced Housing. Old friends suggest she could be a good fit for a local foundation or museum.

Even a nonprofit job, however, could come with complications. San Antonio’s Ethics Code prevents former municipal officials from taking money to represent private entities before the city for at least two years after leaving City Hall. That means Taylor could offer guidance to a nonprofit, but couldn’t lobby — either formally or informally — on its behalf.

True to her nature, Taylor has kept a low profile in the six weeks since her election defeat. Williams said he hasn’t spoken with her since Nirenberg’s swearing-in ceremony last month, although he has thought about giving her a call.

“I just felt like she needed some down time,” Williams said. “She just needed to step back, spend some time with her family. And sometimes that takes three or four months.”